Let's Make a Fan Fiction, Again!

Towards the end of January, I found myself fleshing out my mega-crossover fan fiction project at a random whim. I don't know why but a thought of making a crossover fan fiction has finally kicked in after a long time. I mean, I've actually wanted to make one but had to put it in a perpetual backburner due to a lot of stuffs for some reason, and now suddenly I got back here again after not doing anything story-related for a couple of years.

Long story short, I've had two three projects when it comes to fan fiction, at least those with released chapters. First one is a street racing fan fiction with an outlandish concept where cars can even drive inside shopping malls (but stopped halfway through), second one is a competition-themed fan fiction between television shows that has seen two seasons with the third being worked on until it wasn't, and the third is a version of that but this time with teams of three being featured and has bigger numbers of competing teams. Three different fan fictions, three different places, but all share the same thing: I hate how I executed them nowadays. So now I ended up conceiving a concept for the new one.

STORIES SO FAR

No, this wasn't an online session of MiniRacingOnline, it was the actual fan fiction illustration!

As far as my story creation went, I started this fad when I was in a junior high age, in which I was someone who wanted to play the hell out of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune. Of course that influenced my decision to make a fan fiction centered around the racing genre and came out with a couple of concepts, with only one of them actually materialized. This is what would became of my first fan fiction called Wonkndeso Xtreme Racer, taking a term coined from a local TV show that quite boomed back then as a title of a street racing fan fiction, with a twist. The word "Wonkndeso" (actual spelling of the word is wong ndeso) is actually a  Javanese word for "Village person" (wong = person; ndeso = village), and the word itself is kinda ingrained in the series, down to the backstory: a street racing scene, known as the Wonkndeso Racing Scene, is established in the fictional country of Ndesoland in the year of 20xx, with races in shopping malls, water parks, and recreation centers became somekind of the scene's main attractions in addition to races in mountain passes, racing circuits, city streets, dirt areas, and highways. No wonder I actually named it the "weirdest racing fan fiction ever," because how can you race in shopping malls, water parks, and recreation centers in a full-sized car? Shrinking ray?

The actual fan fiction was started in April 2009 (more than ten years ago, go figure!) on the Wangan Midnight Expressway forums, and would later re-posted on another place on the old SCARTS forum which had a dedicated forum section for it, particularly to contain threads pertaining to character profiles and race tracks featured. As far as the plot goes, the fan fiction follows Zen Kusanagi, a racer from Fujiwara Village who aims to step up to the challenge of the Wonkndeso Racing Scene. He started out racing in the Japanarta GP race and had a fallout in that race that led him to a series of encounters before returning back to the village. He had to start anew with a new car and race through a set of challenges in his neighborhood, progressing through until he eventually rise up in the big city once more to reach the coveted WGP, either it was a short for World Grand Prix or in fact Wonkndeso Grand Prix (you decide?), as his family members join the racing scene. He would also were to assemble a team of his own as he meets a number of racers in the storyline as the story progresses. The main philosophy of the fiction is that Zen comes from a small village which can make the Wonkndeso naming made sense. To sum it up, the story is basically a blend of various works, from Tokyo Xtreme Racer series, to EarthBound, and Yakitate!! Japan, in addition to hints of racing manga works such as Initial D and Bakusou Kyodai Let's & Go! that exist..

A noteworthy fact of the first fan fiction I had was the way graphics in races were done, in which these contents, be it cars or tracks, takes cues from top-down racing games such as GeneRally and MiniRacingOnline, two of the three top-down racing games I frequently played back then although I actually had problems with the first one at first due to imminent PC restarts during gameplay on my old PC. Tracks are drawn in the same vein GR tracks were done while cars use MRO-style graphics, meaning that these cars are drawn in bitmap form with a green background (or any other if the car has a green color) and with appropriate shading on the cars.

Unfortunately none of these top-down graphics are a saving grace to how badly things were written, something I kinda ignored back then because my goal was to "just write random stories for the sake of it." As a result, characterization is often inconsistent between characters, and not to mention the events are... let's say "interesting"; has there been an IRL case where the RB26DETT engine on a Skyline GT-R V-Spec II blew off? How could the main character has an experience enough to earn him a national-scale race in the first chapter? A race after the main character's loss that draws comparison to the very first mission of EarthBound? Even down to the meteor part? But nothing can defeat one true nemesis of all: the badly-written English. Yup, you can spot a number of bad grammars and inconsistent spellings throughout the fiction, despite having a good knowledge of English at that time.

At the end of the day, I've discontinued the fic even though I already bagged the full storyline; who will the main character face in the next set of chapters, where the next set of races will be held, et cetera. On the SCARTS page, GeneRally was the reason why the fic is discontinued, but that just made up 1/4 of the ultimate decision back then. I kinda moved on from writing this genre of fiction, let alone reviving this work, although there might be a way to re-purpose a number of characters already posted and those planned...

On another site, a number of fan fiction concepts have been started by yours truly with a main focus on crossovers between TV shows. This time, it is a fully-fledged competition-centric fan fiction in which competing teams battle in a series of games around the world to become a champion. Taking the idea of Iron Chef and Super Smash Bros., World's Next Top Champion existed as a medium of showdown between 12 two-person teams of TV shows; six select scripted TV shows up against six editions of the Next Top Model franchise. Posted on Reality TV Games where competition fics, mostly based on the NTM franchises, are a commonplace (and formerly a user-only section by the way), it is the next phase of my fan fiction making, favoring on competitive side of things over storylines and plots, and putting the existing characters/contestants to the story instead of making another set of original characters unlike WXR.

Since it is a competition fic, there is no set storyline on its two-season run which would end the fic up like The King of Fighters series if they were, but a (not-so) random storyline could emerge from somewhere within the span of the two seasons. The first season, started in June 2009 (fun fact: I juggled between this and WXR at the time of making), took the competition aspect seriously, with each round (consisting of 9 places to visit, a mix between real and fictional places) consists of 3 rounds where half of the competitors are eliminated in every round, leaving only six in the final, deciding round. Points are given based on the finishing order, with the competitor with most points within the 9-round season declared as the winner and the winning team decided from a summed total of two competitors' points. The second season (started in February 2010) changed the format in which only a single competitor representing a team with 30 entered, still a mix between scripted TV shows and NTM franchises (plus another modeling-based show outside the franchise), and 12 rounds with only a single round being played, abandoning the elimination format. Interesting bits about the first season include intermission rounds akin to the first Super Smash Bros. game and Master Hand as the series' boss fight after the championship, while the second season has a training arc, a couple of interruptions (removing the intermission rounds), and Black Shadow from F-Zero, making it a season with even more storyline than the last. Hell, the second season adds the F-Zero elements to it...

Again, like the WXR, WNTC was illustration-dependent but this time it was more toned down. Things were settled on random numbers rather than pure strength index of individual competitors which resulted in occasional random boosts and longer story per episode since I had to focus on everyone. Occurrences of bad grammar showcases still exist, and sometimes some characters don't retain their personalities in their original shows. However, this is also the first time I switched things up from script-styled writing to prose-styled writing, starting from the second season's 21st episode, a better move writing-wise. As much as I hate how badly-executed they are now that I've revisited it, completing two seasons of this was a feat in itself. It stopped when I was about to hit the third season, with more seasons already prepared in conjunction to the third season's WIP, but I don't think this concept would see a more recent installation as I already moved on from it, along with the fact that there isn't anything interesting around the NTM fandom for me. Maybe if it were to continue, either the competitors would be all scripted TV shows or that the competition is folded somewhere between 2016-2019.

There is a third attempt in 2011, right after the conclusion of the second season of WNTC, featuring more recent shows, again in another site of FanFiction.Net; FanFiction Fandom Sports Festival is yet another competition fic featuring teams of three from various TV shows competing for glory in what is dubbed as the biggest sports festival in the world, inspired by Naruto's Konoha Sports Festival episode. It is of course out-of-character as the description said so, and has birthed two chapters in which both are a trike race where competitors go around the running track. Second round has been made, but it went on the backburner, neglecting the fic's progress for good. It was actually one of the better attempts out there out of the three, but being overwhelmed with many featured teams is a struggle in itself. As a side note, this is at the time where I was in the Inazuma Eleven standom.

As the Sports Festival ended prematurely, I've spent my time making concepts of how my fan fiction should've been; it was something in the lines of either rebooting WXR or WNTC. The latter was a safer choice since the source materials (the featured TV shows) can be revisited anytime and be rebooted in a couple of different formats while the former is a difficult one since the loss of the master files for the concept, combined with my reluctancy.

FORGING A NEW CONCEPT

WARNING: Not a final logo design!

Coming up with a concept is one thing. Since I wanted a mega-crossover, that solved part of the problem. However, it is all down in execution. Several trial-and-errors have been made between the last time I finished a fan fiction with the last time I tried to do a fan fiction (I'm looking at you, Excel-based simulation named World Tournament). Visits to cutting room were also done often, going back-and-forth between having a championship involving award shows and voting competitions and a sports car championship, a case that applies to World Fandom Championship moniker. Eventually, though, after the Writer's Block that struck me for the nth time, going back to square one is an option, but thankfully it's something that I've tried to do for a long time. I would like to call it Super Fandom Wars.

Simply put, Super Fandom Wars is a version of Super Robot Wars series, this time involving characters from some of the best scripted TV shows. In this project, a set of original characters accidentally live in a world of a TV show and an unknown evil emerged somewhere, disrupting the show's timeline and opening up the fact that the fates of different TV shows connect to each other. These main characters will have to rally them in an effort of defeating the disrupting evil and restore peace and continuity in the world of scripted television shows. The challenging part about rallying them is that these people come from different backgrounds, have different personalities, and even some don't have that much of flashy moves to fight, like a Hadouken or similar. However, no matter how different these people are, there shall be one mutual thing they all share to serve their mission: their pure fighting spirit.

To start out the formula, I decided to combine the elements from both Wonkndeso Xtreme Racer and World's Next Top Champion and re-purpose them to fit the project's direction. As a result, a couple of things are adjusted to fit with the story's aesthetics, especially regarding to the participating TV shows. In this project, scripted TV shows who were part of WNTC becomes the participating shows in the war and references towards Next Top Model franchises are erased, save for original character concepts whose designs are based on some of the contestants in various versions of the franchise. Since WNTC has two seasons, these will be a foundation for the separate storyline arcs in the same timeline. What happened during those WNTC seasons (i.e., interactions) might also be rebooted in story form, although obviously some occurrences will differ since the project will only revolve around the TV show locations in contrast to the original material's inclusion of international destinations (except probably one). Last but not least the main hero for the project is, drumrolls please, Zen Kusanagi from WXR! This time around, however, in a more fleshed-out form while keeping his appearance in the fiction intact. Since we're on a war and not racing in a small village, the WXR storyline won't be rebooted in any form, but some of the characters will, maybe mostly those who were about to appear but not due to the story's halted progress. Elements from Fandom Sports Festival will not exist for this project unfortunately, but that's to be expected honestly.

An interesting point about the project is the fact that there are three TV shows representing three different genres set in New York from the get-go, creating a good starting foundation for the story: the teen drama Gossip Girl and the drama show Dirty Sexy Money co-exist with the Sci-Fi show Heroes with an imminent danger of New York being exploded, meaning that Upper East Side will also be blown with them in process. Teaming up might be the only option, but how will the rich kids prepare themselves to fight Sylar, among other evil figures? Meanwhile, the rest of the TV worlds are distant to each other but they all suffer an evil aura surrounding them at the same time, requiring the heroes to stop them before it's too late. This is where the original characters exclusive to the project kick in, whether it's the other heroes aside from Zen, anti-heroes who fight for no one but themselves, or in fact the main villains. Yes, those doctors on Grey's Anatomy? The teenagers from One Tree Hill? Even those housewives from Desperate Housewives? They all become fighters now. Forget using robots from either Earth Federation or The Principality of Zeon for fighting, we have bratty teenagers and hot-blooded housewives fighting evil!

As far as the project goes, it has been worked out for months. Things initially started out on a word processor program and continued in the cloud-based version. Unfortunately, I struggled with this configuration and decided to try out an application called Scrivener. It might be a less-advanced version of word processor compared to the likes of Microsoft Word and Google Docs, but it actually offers more than you could expect: you can set out a number of separate documents and organize them based on whatever aspect of a story you'd like to work on, plus the ability to drag and drop reference images and text documents to a project as their own files and icon personalizations for individual documents. It is no doubt the go-to tool for the writers, often goes hand-in-hand with another of Literature & Latte's application Scapple, and even Aeon Timeline to an extent, a tool for timeline construction. At the moment however, I'm fleshing out a roster of my original characters first before proceeding with the participating series, although between this I just re-started the first season of Heroes, since the Solar Eclipse phenomenon became the foundation for this project. Converging the storylines between three New York-set shows is a current priority for the participating shows' side, while fleshing out original characters is of a higher one. I would estimate about more than 20 original characters will be involved in this project, but for the starting arc it'll be between 10-12, including the minor characters related to the main characters.

I hope that I don't screw this one up, which is to be expected actually. I'm learning my lesson after three failed fan fictions and I want to make sure that the fourth time is a charm. No, not only just a charm but a charm that, in an unexpected twist, can span into three to five different timelines. It's crazy, but these timelines were actually the products of trial-and-error, and that in the future these stories will become a reality. As I speak, my Archive of Our Own account is on standby and more of this post pertaining to this very project will be posted in the future!

~[R]